Free Markets and Flat Earthers

As many of you are no doubt aware, there is a Flat Earth Society. This society professes to believe that the earth is flat and refutes all evidence to the contrary. It has never been clear to me that this is more than an elaborate joke that even the members certainly knew to be untrue.

So it now seems with those who continue to tout free market principles. After the past hundred years when free market principles have on at least two occasions nearly destroyed the world's economy it is hard to believe there are still adherents to the idea of unregulated capitalism. Rapacious greed and an amoral approach to business almost assure that those who are unethical will take advantage of any available opening. Lack of regulation, the free market way, makes for an uneven playing field with the honest always going uphill.

Beyond the question of the unethical is the actual behavior of the free marketeers. When they are in trouble the rules no longer apply and they need some government intervention to succeed (or plunder the Treasury as the case may be).

But the ultimate flaw in the free market ideal is the idea that the market takes care of all problems. Unfortunately people die as the market figures out what products are unsafe. Yes, now we know that China gets rid of its toxins by melting it into plastics for children's toys and that cigarette companies deliberately hid information about the effects of their products, but by the time we get around to scientists finding conclusive evidence of cell phones causing brain cancer and that plastic is the greatest hazard to life on the planet, the free market will have made its profit. The idea that the market takes care of it all is an interesting abstract concept but frightening in the real world.

Even with perfect access to perfect information (the greatest absurdity of all the assumptions of free market capitalism) the reality is that the free market has proven anything but free. It is merely a structural means that allows the most unethical people to steal money and call it business.